


Black Water

by returntosaturn



Series: Back on the Map [4]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: F/M, I Love You, Iceland, Newt ignores general rules of driving, Traveling, Whoops again, back on the map universe, spicy/smutty, suck in ice, whoops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-22
Updated: 2017-05-22
Packaged: 2018-11-03 20:26:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10974753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/returntosaturn/pseuds/returntosaturn
Summary: “I think you’re going the wrong way,” Tina offers, clutching at the handle over the passenger window.“How can you tell?” Newt laughs, one hand on the wheel, coasting over a glade of rock and icy grass.“Um, there’s no road, for one thing.” Tina glances over her shoulder. “You left it….way back there.”“Roads are more like guidelines, really,” he says, even as the vehicle jostles and shivers and goes skidding down a particularly steep slope of earth.// Part of the Back on the Map series. Tina and Newt travel to Iceland.





	Black Water

The mountains rake dark against a smoky sky, tendrils of snow painted over them to their peaks, blurring the delineation between land and firmament. They spread the length a fjord of glass, dotted with fishing boats. It is possible, here in a place so silent and untouched, to believe that the crush of places like New York City and London do not exist, though she thinks she can see the beauty in both. There is something especially earthly, natural, and pure here. Something that roots her soul and calls her beyond herself. 

She can see why Newt seeks out these places whenever he can; why he is called back to the quiet, why he seems to be wrapped in it, part of it. Born of it. 

He is right in what he said about the spirit of animals being so much more simpler, for she can feel it here in the air, reflected as something inherent and baked into the ground itself.

They chose this place partly on a whim, and partly because it was a place he had--to her surprise--never visited, due to their host of a narrow array of species. 

Camping in Hornstrandir gave them watch to wild foxes, birds, whales and seals at the beach. Newt took time to pause and photograph each unique and beautiful flower they found, observing in that careful, thorough way while she watched, quiet pride filling her while she waited for him to return, show her his screen to point out petals and stigma, unique leaves and growth patterns. He even found and befriend a grey fox, approaching on hands and knees to feed it a bit of the roast beef they’d packed for sandwiches and scratched behind its ears with the supplication of gentle hums and clicks of his tongue.

It never fails her to be taken up by how _smart_ he is, how much he contains, both in heart and in mind. How much seemingly useless information pours from him that he has classified and found use for. It is his call, she thinks, to take the commonplace and bring out the extraordinary. 

But now they’ve moved on to a small hamlet flanked on both sides by icy inlets, set into a ring of jutting mountains, picturesque and quiet as if the people that settled here had considered it beautiful enough to tolerate seclusion just to wake up to this view every morning, and made their own way, their own slow and timeworn pace about life set by the rhythm of the mountains themselves.

Their accommodations are a creaking attic apartment with unfinished floorboards and a single bed for them both. The cold through the cracked window thrills their naked skin the first night, when he makes her croon and clutch at the sheets, singing his name to the rafters overhead.

In the morning, they take their rented Jeep for the mountains, mapless and aimless, relying only on landmarks and instinct for direction. They pause to observe a gushing waterfall, spewing from the mountainside, white and roaring. They stand far from the foot of it, and even at this distance Tina can feel the thunder of the force of it under her boots. 

Further on, they try for a horizon of snowy mountains.

“I think you’re going the wrong way,” Tina offers, clutching at the handle over the passenger window.

“How can you tell?” Newt laughs, one hand on the wheel, coasting over a glade of rock and icy grass.

“Um, there’s no road, for one thing.” Tina glances over her shoulder. “You left it….way back there.”

“Roads are more like guidelines, really,” he says, even as the vehicle jostles and shivers and goes skidding down a particularly steep slope of earth.

“Newt!” she cries, unable to hold back her nervous laughter.

“They’re just over there, see? We’re nearly there.”

Now on a slick patch of snow, the vehicle chugs and struggles and all at once sinks to a halt, tires spinning.

“Oh. Shit.” Newt yanks at the stick, fumbles at the peddles.

“Guidelines, huh?” Tina cuts.

He pushes into reverse, only to dig them deeper, sending Tina into a fluster of curses.

“Maybe we can dig ourselves out,” he offers.

“With what?”

“Well, help me push then.” He unbuckles and steps out into the crunch, and Tina follows only after processing and balking at _exactly_ what he’s just asked her to do.

Fruitlessly, they shove together, boots slipping and pressing into the slick white, and the Jeep doesn’t move an inch.

“Harder,” she urges, and he tries but falls short with a snort of laughter.

She makes the effort on her own, but gives up to swat his arm with her gloved hand. “You pig!”

“I’m sorry!” His hands fly up in false apology, still chuckling under his breath, the effects swirling in the air.

She gives another useless shove, then groans and sags against the hood. “I can’t believe this.”

“We’re fine. It isn’t as if we’re going to die out here.”

“Aren’t we?” she challenges, barring her arms over her chest.

“No. Not for a few more decades at least.”

She cuts a glare that could bend steel and turns for the car again, hitching herself inside and snapping the door closed.

“Tina, I’m sorry! I’m being serious now!” he begs, hurrying after, shutting them back into the cab, preserving warmth even as Tina shivers ruefully in her seat. “I’m sorry, I’ll call the rescue services. We’ll be fine.”

She huffs incredulously, tucking deeper into herself as he dials. 

He issues their coordinates to whoever answers, describes their dilemma and their vehicle, gives a few more affirmative answers, even admits to spinning the tires, and ends the call, turning to look at her with wind-reddened cheeks and earnest eyes.

“I’m sorry for teasing,” He says. “They say they’ll be here in forty minutes to an hour.”

“An hour?!” she starts again, glaring his way even as he shrugs helplessly. 

She slumps her shoulder against the window, staring into the flat landscape before them, the jag of mountains they’d been trying for at least a mile off.

Newt goes silent, watching out his own window, and it's only several minutes of cold silence until Tina gives a giggle.

He glances to her, and she clamps a hand over her mouth, straining against it until her eyes crease closed and she lets it loose, doubling in her seat.

He chuckles, watching her unravel. She waves a hand, trying and failing to calm herself before dissolving into squeaking, almost snorting giggles.

She isn’t even sure exactly what’s caught her; the ridiculousness of the situation or his well-timed joke from earlier catching up with her at the right moment. He joins her, laughter subdued and husky, even as she wipes at her eyes and clutches her belly.

Soon, she skitters to a quiet, reaching to pat a hand against his knee, pinching where it tickles and he arches involuntarily toward her, still caught on the wave of her contagious euphoria, laugh pitching reflexively high and bright at her touch, until she’s close enough to touch and he brushes a loose strand of hair off her cheek.

Her eyes glint, pure and honest, _joyful_ , seeking his and she laughs all over again at the wrinkle at the corner of his eye, leans to kiss it. Then his hand finds her chin, bringing her in until the respective rhythms of their laughter twine, pressed between lips. 

He hums appreciatively as she still giggles against him. He holds her there, tastes her joy until she is silent.

She reciprocates, changing the angle and darting her tongue out across his upper lip, challenging a change in tone, a step further. He rises to the occasion, threading his fingers at what little of her hair he can reach, poking from the edge of her blue knit cap.

Her figure is cushioned beneath the layers of her parka, so he reaches up to tug at the zipper beneath her scarf. She pulls back with a contented sigh, tugging off her gloves and scarf and flinging them to the floorboards before planting her hands on either seat and hauling herself up and backwards over the console, squirming her way with surprising grace and unsurprising eagerness toward the narrow back seat.

“Where are you going?” he teases, watching with a gaze marked in lingering mirth and something ten times as indecent.

“If we’re going to be here for an hour, we might as well make the most of it,” she says in the midst of her shuffle before she’s settled across the center seat, and reaches forward to pull the yellow tail of his scarf.

He follows without trepidation, and they laugh together all over again with he struggles past the threshold, crooked limbs and snagging bootlaces.

He splays before her, at her feet and between her knees, already divesting himself of his scarf and his windbreaker, while she slides out of her own coat, shoving it aside before hauling him back up to her, hands pressed to the contour of his cheeks and the ghost of stubble there. One hand cradles her chin, mouth drinking of her, while his other settles at her belly, against the thin ribbing of her t-shirt. His wrist turns, angling so that his thumb sweeps over the seam that rides the center of her insulated blue nylon of her trousers.

She twitches under him and gives an eager sound, pulling from his mouth wetly to stare quizzically at his face, breathing hot against his cheek. He grins.

Somehow he rises, knees bowed under the low roof of the cabin and a hand using the seat for leverage. He kicks deftly out of his boots and twists to angle over her in one easy, charged motion, a hand wrapped at her waist to guide her back, crowding her against the passenger’s side window. 

There’s a determined lure in his eyes, nobly emerald now, and she yields him the upper hand, giving an expectant sound under his gaze. 

He quirking a teasing brow at her before he goes stoic again and reverently untucks the cuffs of her pants from her boots and unlaces them under her watch. They thump against the floorboards to deaf ears when he scales over her again, lifting at her hips to arrange the fleece lining of her coat beneath her, a bolster against the scratching fiber of the cloth seats.

These amendments made, he dips eagerly to poke his nose to the waistband of her pants and under her shirt and she shivers at the press of cold against the heat crawling over her skin, until he balms the spot with a kiss, using one fine-boned hand to hook her shirt higher, fingers darting beneath it to trace at the curve her breast, while his mouth hunts for the straight line of a scar, at the base of her ribs. He finds it, laves at it worshipfully until she hums.

When he lifts his face level with hers again, his pupils are blown, irises a ring of smoky olive-gold, and her chest works at the sight of him, the _aura_ of him, the atmosphere of the vehicle now crackling with waiting indulgence, antics aside. He reaches to pull away her cap, a tangled chestnut wave falling at her ears for him to run his fingers at when he presses in to kiss her. 

She pulls at the thin fleece jacket he wears as an added layer, but he gives a growl and backs off, scaling down, coiling at her knees and reaching in to tug the cord fastening her trousers. 

She lifts, letting him pull them away, his hand gathering with it the layer of her plain cotton underwear and tugging both away, careful not to displace the fleece paletted beneath her. She kicks free, and he’s already _there_ , cool breath at her core, coiling through her in a flash of tingling heat.

Her knees bend to accommodate him, her right foot pressed against the end of the console, the other between the seat and his flank. She laughs again, endeared at the sight of him, still clothed but on his stomach against the length of the backseat, bronze curls falling into his eyes as he inspects, kisses, nips along the length of her thigh. Her laughter catches to a hiccuped gasp when he wastes no more time in pressing his lips to the crux of her.

His eyes find hers as he wanders, tests, and she arches back into the glass with a purely feminine and feline yowl. He holds her fast, thumbs at the jut of her hipbones, before one hand slips to caress and feel the working of the slender muscles at her stomach, pushing away her ribbed tee, higher and higher until he pets the valley between her breasts. She gets the idea, and leans up marginally to pull the shirt over her head, shivering back against the cool of the interior. She isn’t sure what makes her gasp first, the press of cold glass against her shoulder blades or his mouth finding exactly where she needs him.

Naked and bare but for her simple bra, with dove grey daylight pearling on their skin, she can’t bring her mind around to be ashamed of it. She can see the mountains from here, painted pure white and slate in the distance, and she only has a moment to think on the fuse of divinity and complete earthliness in this act before the thought fizzles away in favor of focusing back to his mouth.

He hums against her, eyes on her face, and the sky lights his skin like some fine, freckled stone. It is equal parts his clever tongue and the formless truth of something elemental and primary flooding through her at the sight of him that sees her to breaking, crashing and clutching around him in three stinted gasps and the sudden roll of a primal moan that doesn’t sound like her at all.

He leans away, licking at his lips, and there’s absolutely nothing hidden in his eyes. He wipes at his chin with a heavy hand, planting it to her side and giving an expended pant across her belly. She reaches a hand to stroke his curls, and he presses up into her touch. She shimmies her way to lie flat beneath him, inching the blanket of her spread coat down with her. 

Now, he allows her to push away the layer of his jacket, tug his simple t-shirt over his head, and grasp the fly of his field pants, shoving an eager hand under the waistband to brush worn fleece, cotton, and hot, silky velvet.

He twitches, clenches his eyes closed. “I don’t know how much time we have,” he pants, blinking at her and stroking a hand at her cheek.

“Let me…” she insists and gives a measured brush of her fingers. She uses her other hand to shove his garments away, and he works out of them, slow and hesitant.

She curves her wrist, grasping him. His head falls to her shoulder, and she feels the graze of teeth at her collar bone. He mumbles something she does not catch. He uncoils, stretching over her and purring content and blithe in her ear after several moments of her sentient strokes.

Then he reaches, brushes her wrist tenderly and pulls her hand from beneath his layers. “I want _you_...” he declares at her ear, quiet but no less certain.

They fumble a moment, trying to navigate the narrow space until he guides them to a position of repose, laying on their sides, the dragon and the thunderbird painted over their respective skins aligned when he coaxes her thigh over his hip.

His back presses against the wall of the backseat, but all it takes is a simple rock of his hips to encourage a pleased sound from her once he’s seated within her, and so he tries it again. She keens and arches, working at her own friction, finding the intricacies of the new angle. 

He strokes her hair off her cheek, hums warmly and a razor focus takes his gaze. “Tina…” he whispers emphatically, then blinks away, shying from the words she knows are at the tip of his tongue, for they’ve weighted unsaid on hers as well. She lets him hesitate, but curves a hand at his jaw, imploring him to meet her and she hopes her plea is clear. Her _answer_ is clear.

There isn’t time for further discourse, as his pace snaps quick, and she grinds in to it and lets out a long, smoky exhale.

She tries to draw out the moment, but knows their time is limited, so she gives in to the ache calling her to the edge and meets him, finding that deferring to the natural pace he’s set is much more satisfying.

They unravel together, pulsing and clutching and grasping until they’re panting together, weighed and pillowed in the burrow of her coat. She tries to hold out, eyes clamped closed as the familiar yearning satisfaction eases through her muscles until the present returns and she blinks open her eyes to catch the last traces of electrified tension written over his face.

She kisses him openly when he draws his gaze up to her, something bashful and clumsy peeking out. He cradles her head, holding fast for his own assurance when decision rakes through his expression. His lips draw to a thin line and his eyes find hers, unblinking. He open his mouth to speak...

“I love you.” She beats him to it, anticipation and anxiousness breaking at finally hearing the words aloud, and it does not sound nearly as small and innocent as she’d imagined. 

She takes a moment, letting the phrase bloom in the humid air around them, letting it fill in places in her that have long been untouched, and all the clumsy, subdued times she might’ve wanted to say it but stopped herself short. She presses her lips together when they tremble at the weight of it, trying at the unexpected prickle behind her eyes, helpless to hide it. 

He blinks slowly, watching, as always. Then smiles.

He huffs a laugh against her cheek, and leans in to nuzzle his face against hers, stubble ghosting over her skin. He gives a little purr, then pulls away to meet her eyes, their noses butting. “I love _you_ , Tina,” he answers and lets it settle. “And I love your hastiness in beating me to the punch.”

She echos him, laughing sweetly, a little too watery for her liking, against the curve of his shoulder. “I just think its important you know where I stand,” she tries to tease, though she’s sure it comes out weakly.

“I do understand,” he insists, reaching for a hand to stroke his thumb across the breadth of her palm, eyes still on her, cataloging every inch of her expression as if he sees something new there. “I understand _completely_.” He presses her palm to his lips and says, “You’re wonderful. I love you. Hmm…that _sounds_ wonderful.”

“It does,” she agrees, and leans to kiss at the corner of his mouth before he turns to meet her.

They find a lucky stack of napkins in the console, tidy up and redress, and climb back over the threshold into the front seats, quietly thrilled and wholly content, hand in hand until their rescue comes.

She stands, still buzzing with adrenaline and warmed even in the cold while the man that arrives and makes to unstick their vehicle mashes a few buttons, stamps against the pedals and guides it to a glade of rock. Newt is both quietly and politely discomposed at the simplicity of the solution, but thanks him all the same and follows him back to a main road.

Back in their narrow attic, steam pools for a warm shower. This time he whispers it first and she echos, sealing the promise and the start of a vow they will carry to the edge of this journey and farther still.

**Author's Note:**

> [allscissorsallpaper](http://allscissorsallpaper.tumblr.com) on tumblr.


End file.
